ENVOY TO THE GADSBYS

What is the moral? Who rides may read,
When the night is thick and the tracks are blind.
A friend at a pinch is a friend indeed;
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind:
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,
Tenderest voices cry, "Turn again,”

Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,
High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone-
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

One may fall, but he falls by himself.

Falls by himself with himself to blame;
One may attain, and to him is the pelf,

Loot of the city in Gold or Fame:
Plunder of earth shall be all his own
Who travels the fastest and travels alone.

Wherefore the more ye be holpen and stayed-
Stayed by a friend in the hour of toil,
Sing the heretical song I have made—

His be the labor and yours be the spoil.
Win by his aid and the aid disown
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

LATER VERSES

THE BALLAD OF THE EAST

AND WEST

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side, And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride;

He has lifted her out of the stable door between the dawn and the day,

And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.

Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:

"Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides ? "

Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar :

"If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.

At dusk he harries the Abazai- at dawn he is into

Bonair ;

But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to

fare.

So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favor of God, ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai.

But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then

For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.

There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,

And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen."

The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,

With the mouth of a bell, and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree.

The Colonel's son to the Fort has won; they bid him stay to eat

Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.

He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,

Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai—

Till he was aware of his father's mare, with Kamal

upon her back,

And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.